Cordcutting 101

I wanted to cover a subject near and dear to me. Cutting the overpriced commercial carrying cord that pumps 500 channels of BS into my TV. 495 of which just serve as filler with programming I will never watch.

The decisions to cut the cord once and for all came when I realized that I was using it as background noise more than anything else. Like while going to bed putting ESPN Sportscenter on, or when finding nothing interesting leaving it on while I browsed Reddit on my Smartphone...Once I realized the lack of use and all of this non-use coming at $90'ish dollars per month I knew what had to be done.

Ah, but nothing is ever really that simple is it. Enter the Family, a Wife and 2 Kids who I would not only have to provide content for but also make it an easy to use interface that didn't require plugging into the Matrix to navigate. While I could find what I wanted easy enough I needed a solution that would not just serve me but also function for every room in the house simultaneously. Fuuuuuuu. So I kept the cord attached while I built an infrastructure to replace DirecTV/Cable once and for all.

In order to tackle such a task I broke it up into phases. Step 1, Talk Wife into green lighting a $1,500 Gaming/HTPC. Because let's be real, anything worth doing is worth doing right. After this mission was accomplished and my glorious AI TV Machine was alive and breathing I moved on to Step 2...

Step 2, WTF am I doing? This was the R&D portion of events. Researching how and where to get content. Media frontend interfaces and how to network the entire house to basically act as "Cable" boxes in the other rooms working off of my main HTPC. Looking at services like Netflix/Amazon Prime/ Hulu I was satisfied these would work as "Filler" content options, but it still had that feeling of someone telling me what I can watch...meh. Research quickly led me to the darker side of things and I found ways of getting exactly what I want, when I want it.

As Lord Gabben said "We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem," he said. "If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable."

So enter the Darkside...After months of tinkering I settled on a program called Sickbeard that is used for accessing my Usenet account and automatically downloading, renaming and moving files to the proper directories to be displayed on my Frontend software XBMC. Basically I enter shows I want to watch. It checks air dates and runs searches at set intervals until finding a matching file. Once a file is found it auto grabs it, downloads it, renames it and puts it in a properly structured folder so when I open my Media center it acts like a DVR with all the shows I want to watch. With the added advantage of the commercials being edited out already.

After months of this being set-up and working flawlessly. The strangest thing happened. I noticed no one in the family was watching the DirecTV anymore. The simple little solution worked perfect and this is when I called to cancel DirecTV...The bastards offered me a discounted rate for 6 months and Free NFL Sunday Ticket with no new contract. So I took it, watched the Football season THEN cancelled, but that's beside the point ha ha. Point being the cord had been severed and I was on to a whole new world of entertainment that I constructed.

The only thing left to do was to finish setting up the rest of the network to seamlessly integrate the experience to all TV's in the house. I accomplished this by using the older PC I replaced, Building my son a $400 midrange rig and installing a FireTV for my younger daughter all running the XBMC software networked together. This had the effect of a whole home DVR style setup that due to the power of my HTPC could run all TV's in the house at the same time. The only real challenging part was that I decided against Wi-Fi for streaming to all devices and instead hardwired the entire house to get perfect streaming to the other devices.

Now 2 years later the thought of even having cable seems crazy. Like why was I paying 90+/month to be inundated with commercials? I think I may even watch more shows than I did before since hour long shows can often be watch in 38-45 mins without commercials. All shows get watched the day they air and we only watch what we want to watch when we want to watch it. Short of now being the "Cable Guy" for the family whenever there is an issue, I have no regrets on the choice to cut the cord.

With all that said here are some answers to often asked questions.

-But What about SPORTS man?!

This was a tough one at first. Tracking down live sporting events is often hard at the start. Until you know where to find them. MLB, NBA, MLS, NHL, UFC all have streaming HD options from their respected services. Only issue often times is that local teams are blacked out. This is easily solved by using a VPN or Proxy to view these services.

The NFL also has a legit streaming option. It just isn't available in North America due to the Multi-Billion dollar deal with DirecTV. Again this is easily skirted by a VPN service or Proxy and once you have access to the site you can even use your American CC and purchase the full season package for as little as $99

On top of all the legit options there are of course streams upon streams to watch Live content although the quality can be iffy.

-How do I watch my favorite shows like Walking Dead and Game of Thrones same day?

Well, see that little program Sickbeard, Research it, understand it, LOVE it.

-What Programs will complete a Full HTPC set-up?

Web Browser, Sickbeard, SABnzb, Usenet Account, XBMC, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Trakt.TV...and whatever else you can find that works for you.

-What about news programming?

You can often find content directly from the news sites like CNN, Fox News, BBC News etc...and for local news a HDTV antenna will pull in all local stations depending on your location.

The best way to determine if cordcutting will work for you is to try it. Much like I did you can keep the Sat/Cable hooked up while you mess around on a PC hooked up to your TV and eventually you may just find that you use the PC more and more, and wont even notice the difference when you call up and cancel. Saving yourself money on something you might not use as much as you think.